BIOS - WEBSITES - MUSEUMS - EXHIBITS - ARCHIVES

AN INTERACTIVE HISTORY OF JAZZ: 1718 TO NOW

Generation Beta: 1920 - 1940

click on boxes & blue text below for audio and more info

* 1920 to 1930 - The decade of experimentation. Fittingly, Charlie Parker, the jazz musician known and revered primarily for his experimentations, was born in the first year of the decade, on Aug 29 1920. The same year, Mamie Smith, a vaudevillian from Cincinnati, Ohio enters history when she records "Crazy Blues",  becoming the first African-American to record a blues vocal. Smith was a uniquely gifted and versatile performer who also acted in numerous plays and films and sang jazz; her work as a singer revealed and solidified the connection between jazz and blues. As a result Smith would a be major influence on pioneers of both idioms. A few years later, another lady singer named Smith - Bessie Smith, deeply influenced by Mamie, would make her first recordings. 

A pianist named Fletcher Henderson begins experimenting with a new approach to writing, arranging and staging jazz; Henderson, his brother Horace and Don Redman (Joshua's great-uncle), create a new kind of dance music that would eventually be called Swing -  exciting horns laid over fierce rhythms, all played by unbelievable musicians - Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins,  Billie Holiday's father Clarence Holiday, Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter and Sun Ra to name a few of Henderson's crew. Before the end of the decade, the Henderson Orchestra would make a movie, St. Louis Blues (1929), which also featured James P Johnson and Bessie Smith.  Also in 1929, a pianist from New Jersey named William Basie arrives in Kansas City to join a band led by Bennie Moten,

Duke Ellington was a bandleader for two years by this time, holding down a regular engagement at Harlem’s Cotton Club, the gig of a lifetime for the 20-something newcomer from Washington D.C. Duke and his crew would electrify the club for years to come. The Ellington Orchestra would eventually share the Cotton Club with (some say because of mafia pressure) and was eventually replaced by a new orchestra led by a young drummer from Baltimore named Cab Calloway. 

* 1930 to 1935 - Winter, 1930-31: A young pianist named Mary Williams travels to Chicago to make her first records as a solo artist for Brunswick Records; the label suggests she add "Lou" to her name. The songs she records, "Drag Em'" & Night Life" become popular and Mary Lou Williams ascends to celebrity status, eventually working with Tommy Dorsey, Earl Hines, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington among many others. She was also a mentor to and early collaborator with Dizzy Gillespie & Thelonius Monk. Williams died in 1981 after receiving several honorary degrees, 2 Guggenheim fellowships and other accolades. Spring, 1930: Movie theaters across America are showing "King of Jazz", a celluloid musical review starring Paul Whiteman March 1931: Cab Calloway, 24 and leading an orchestra at Harlem's Cotton Club, records  "Minnie the Moocher"; the song would make him a cultural icon. In no time, "Minnie" becomes a million-seller, make the first of countless movie appearances (a "Betty Boop" cartoon short, Minnie the Moocher), eventually inducted into the "Grammy Hall of Fame" in 1999.

A fateful meeting that would change the nature of jazz and popular music forever takes place between Fletcher Henderson and a relatively unknown Benny Goodman, who had just been selected as the band leader for the hit radio show Let's Dance. Goodman needs music for his new gig and Henderson needs money in the aftermath of the stock market crash so he sells the Henderson Band's music book to Goodman who in turn hires musicians from Henderson's band to teach his guys how to play the charts. In less than a year, Benny Goodman is America’s most celebrated musician, redefining popular music by giving it a jazz vocabulary. While Goodman is learning the ropes as a bandleader, Ella Fitzgerald begins her climb to superstardom after making her singing debut at Harlem's Apollo Theater, on November 21, 1934. 

* 1935 to 1939 -–Now called the “King of Swing”, Benny Goodman dominates the music biz. Thus he was able to push the envelope and experiment. Case in point - He hired and showcased African-American musicians and writers when few white band leaders would - of course there was Fletcher Henderson and there was Billie Holiday, who made her first recording ("Your Mother's Son in Law") as member of Goodman's band in 1933; Teddy Wilson, Lionel Hampton  & Charlie Christian (one of the first to play jazz on an electric guitar) became stars after joining Goodman's band. In 1936 Woody Herman forms the first of many successful "Herds" and at roughly the same time legendary Kansas City bandleader Bennie Moten dies after an unsuccessful tonsillectomy. Moten's pianist William "Count" Basie then re-organizes the majority of Moten's musicians and the Count Basie Orchestra was born. 

   In mid-1937, Glen Miller forms his first band which is soon disbanded because of a lack of success. Soon, Miller's fortunes as a bandleader would change in a most dramatic way. On September 26, 1937 Bessie Smith, now America's highest paid African-American entertainer, is severely injured in an auto accident; Smith is refused treatment at a nearby "whites-only" hospital and has to be taken to a "black" hospital miles away, where she dies at the age of 43.

* 1939 - Glen Miller’s Orchestra, the most popular in the world, records and releases "In the Mood" which becomes it's signature tune; On June 16th, drummer Chick Webb dies and his successful band becomes "Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra", taking the name of Webb's 22 year old singer who is the most popular element of the band since coming on board 4 years prior. Fitzgerald would make 150 records before leaving the band to pursue her solo career several years later. Meanwhile, Fletcher Henderson disbands his orchestra to join Benny Goodman full time, only leading bands occasionally until his death a decade later. One of Henderson's former musicians, Coleman Hawkins becomes the first jazz saxophonist to be regarded as "important" after unveiling a new approach to his instrument while making the historic recording of the song "Body and Soul". At the time, Hawkins is in New York, and it's clear from listening to "Body..." that his playing is being influenced by experimenting with a group of musicians involved in the development of a new jazz discipline - known later as Bebop.  Coincidentally, the man who would soon make Bebop and the saxophone a national obsession, Charlie Parker, has just arrived in New York for the first time. The year ends with Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn shaking hands for the first time after an Ellington concert in Billy's hometown Pittsburgh. Strayhorn takes the opportunity to tell, then show how he would have arranged one of Ellington's compositions. Impressed, Duke invites Strayhorn to visit him New York; he writes the basic idea for "Take the A Train" while riding the subway uptown to Ellington's Harlem apartment for the first time. Strayhorn would be Ellington's collaborator or as Duke put it "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head..." until his death in 1967.  

NEXT